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Irish mint double chocolate chunk brownies with peppermint frosting!

Posted Mar 17 2011 5:46pm

Happy St. Patricks day!

I am baking brownies right now for the senior center. DG requires that all the girls do at least 4 hours of community service per quarter and I cant imagine a better way to fulfill that than baking for cute grandmas and grandpas. It always bugs me when people bring super unhealthy desserts to people in the hospital or the elderly. Obviously dessert should taste really good, but you can still bake in a health conscious manner. These brownies do have a fair amount of sugar, but they are made with whole wheat flour and cocoa powder instead of pure solid chocolate. They also have grapeseed oil and eggs instead of vegetable oil. Vegetable oil often has trans fats and doesn’t have any outstanding health benefits. Grapeseed oil has a very high unsaturated fat content, which has been shown to improve LDL and HDL levels! I also used reduced fat cream cheese for the frosting. Ordinarily, I am all about full fat, but this recipe already had plenty of healthy fats in it!

Irish mint-double chocolate chunk brownies with peppermint frosting

Dry ingredients –

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 cup mint cocoa powder

1 cup whole wheat white flour

1 tsp baking powder (or less if you want it less cakey!)

Optional: 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Wet ingredients –

5 eggs

2 tbsp grapeseed oil

2 tbsp butter

1/3 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

5 drops peppermint extract

Reduced fat cream cheese icing –

8 drops mint

green food coloring

1/2 cup sugar

8-oz reduced fat cream cheese

Directions – Preheat the oven to 350. Combine all the wet ingredients in one bowl and mix well. Combine all the dry ingredients in another bowl and mix well. Pour the wet over the dry and combine with a spatula. Pour into a greased brownie pan and bake for 28 minutes (or until passes the toothpick test). Let cool. Whip all the frosting ingredients together and spread over the brownies. Slices and enjoy!

So tasty!
I loved that these were fluffier like cake but still dense enough to be a brownie. They are chocolately with just the right amount of peppermint!
No time for benefits today!